CONCORD, N.H. — Former Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Scott Brown won New Hampshire’s Republican U.S. Senate primary on Tuesday, moving forward in his attempt to get back to Washington from another state.
Brown faced nine primary opponents, though only two mounted serious campaigns. The front-runner from the start, he spent months tailoring his message toward a November showdown with incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, and he spent Tuesday reminding voters that Republicans need to gain six seats to win a majority in the Senate during the last two years of President Obama’s term.
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“This is one of the most important elections in the country – it could determine the fate of the Senate,” he said. “I’m pointing out to them that I have the tools, resources and the team to actually take on and beat Senator Shaheen.”
This is Brown’s third U.S. Senate campaign in five years. One of the original tea party favorites, he shocked the nation by winning a 2010 special election to replace the late Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy. That win in a Democratic stronghold vaulted Brown to the top of the GOP’s list of rising stars, but he was soundly defeated by Democrat Elizabeth Warren in 2012. Last year, he moved to New Hampshire, where he had a vacation home and had lived as a toddler, seeking an alternate route to Washington.
If he’s successful, Brown would become only the third U.S. senator to serve multiple states. Waitman Willey served Virginia and then West Virginia when it became a state during the Civil War, and James Shields represented Illinois and Minnesota before being elected from Missouri in 1879.
Shaheen wasted no time contrasting Brown’s recent arrival in the state to her decades of public service as a state senator, the first woman elected governor of New Hampshire and the state’s first female U.S. senator.
Before polls closed Tuesday, she began running one TV ad criticizing Brown and one featuring New Hampshire residents and communities she’s helped. “I didn’t just move here. I’ve been here, working to make a difference for New Hampshire,” she planned to tell supporters Tuesday night.
Brown’s two main primary challengers, former U.S. Sen. Bob Smith and former state Sen. Jim Rubens, cast him as a liberal flip-flopper. Brown answered by calling himself an independent problem-solver willing to work across the aisle. But he mostly focused on Shaheen, attempting to tie her to the increasingly unpopular Obama.
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